Pieces That You Left Behind
by axolotlgirl
Summary: Jeanne was the one blown up in 'Bury Your Dead.' Tony grieves, but his hand is already being held. Chapter 10 now up.
1. Chapter 1

It hurts.

Before this, he'd had no idea that grief could take a physical form – he'd assumed it was emotional impact, the weight of the unbearable loss flooding through every rational thought left. But this physical presentation; well, it is excruciating. He can't breathe, he can't speak, he can't even bring himself to cry. He feels as though he could vomit for a thousand years and still have bile in his gut. He feels – well, numb with pain. This thought makes him laugh, a low, hollow laugh. Multiple pairs of hands on his upper back, gentle and consoling he is sure, although when he doesn't respond to the touch and the hands are lifted away, each has left a raw imprint that sting as though he's been burned.

It occurs to him while he is suffering this, sitting in the gutter on the side of the road staring into the middle distance, that he has almost nothing left of her. Sure, he has her clothes at his apartment and her Cheerios in the kitchen and a yellow toothbrush which he had told her matched her eyes.

'_Yellow?' she'd asked, amused, foam spilling out of her mouth, which made her look so cute. _

'_Well... no,' he'd been forced to admit. Then he flashed a 110 watt smile, and said 'It's the thought that counts, right?' _

'_Cheeky,' she'd said, grabbing him by the ears and kissing him flush on the mouth, making any tension on the surface between them a binding, instead of a boundary._

Sometimes, after a difficult case, he'd drive to her apartment, where she'd open the door and smile at him, which was enough to ebb out the tension and he'd walk away ten minutes, thirty minutes, 12 hours later and have forgotten why he was there in the first place. Now, watching her burnt corpse, bandaged in black plastic and carried by Jimmy Palmer, or Pimmy Jalmer, or whatever the hell Ducky's sidekick was called, he suddenly realised that he couldn't picture that smile.

And as that piece of information hits him, he realises how much he cared.

'_I love you,' he'd said, breathlessly_. _She looked at him, eyes red from days of crying, and although they weren't physically touching, he felt her body relax. He grabbed her, fisted hsi hand in her hair and kissed her, pouring out the grief from losing Paula and into her. It was then he'd vowed to never let her go, even when her father was dead._

He feels a warm presence beside him, an antithesis to the cold, and it takes him a second to figure out that Ziva is seated beside him, holding his arm, her small fingers curled around his bicep and her head resting on his shoulder. He looks at her, registers that this position is unnaturally vulnerable for Ziva, and turns away again, so that he won't have to hear her lecture which he knows is coming.

In front of him, Gibbs and Probie pack up the truck, as Ducky drives away with _her, _cold and alone. _At least someone will mourn her, _he thinks. She deserves someone to mourn her, anyway; she taught him to love, with her brilliant green eyes and her inquisitive mind and her love for floral wallpaper. That one makes him laugh out loud.

'Something you'd like to share, Tony?'

He starts, and turns to look at Ziva, who still has her head perched on his shoulder, looking straight ahead, an impassive look in her eyes. She doesn't say it harshly; in fact, she sounds like she almost cares. _Like she could, _he retorts to himself. _Cold hard spy-girl and all that._

_She wasn't. She was kind and loving, looked for the best in him when all he could see was flaws._

Thinking of her again makes him wince in pain, an overwhelming surge of grief swimming in his heart. He pushes Ziva away, so forcefully that he actually knocks her to the ground. Admittedly, this isn't a very far distance, but when he turns to look at her there are tears in her eyes.

Ziva stands up slowly, levelling herself with him. Her eyes flick over him and she meets his gaze, cool like she's been trained, but there's something else in those tears and he stands for a moment intrigued. She opens her mouth to speak, but he beats her to it.

'Don't. Just don't.'

And with that, both of them turn on their heel and walk away.

He goes back to work just three days after she's gone, despite orders from both Gibbs and the Director to stay home for at least two weeks. Her body is flown to France after Ducky's done his prodding so there isn't even anything physical to mourn. So one morning he gets out of bed, drives himself to work, and throws himself into the case at hand so enthusiastically that Gibbs takes him aside after the case is closed and tells him to talk to someone. He laughs, tells Gibbs she was just an assignment, that he's ready to work, when what he really wants to say is that he's working just to have something to distract him.

Even the ever-happy Abby can't make him talk. She tries alcohol, bribery, black roses, smiling sweetly, and he just laughs and tells her she's as cute as ever. One day, after she's tried bribing him with case-cracking evidence, he suddenly stops laughing and snaps at her for being immature. He immediately feels bad when he sees her eyes well up, and even more so when she straight out punches him in the shoulder.

'TALK to someone Tony!' she yells, grabbing Bert and disappearing into her office.

He thinks she might be right.

McGee doesn't say anything, but gets bullied mercilessly by Tony for several weeks, to the point where Ziva steps in and, in one fluid motion, brings both to their knees. She looks at McGee, glares at Tony, and storms back behind her desk to resume her conversation with her contact in Tel Aviv. Gibbs walks in, notices both male agents wincing on the ground, and wisely doesn't say a thing. For the rest of the day, not a single person says anything.

He notices Ziva watching him from time to time, but does not make eye contact for more than a second. He wonders if she can see through his charade, and immediately ups his game. He will NOT think of _her_ on company time.

Ziva cooks dinner for him one night, and he has never been more surprised when she turns up on his doorstep holding a casserole dish between two oven-mitted hands. Her eyes flick over him for the second time in a week and he looks down at himself, ragged, unshaved and with a beer in one hand. She sends him to the shower and he is surprised to find, standing in the spray, how raw his skin is. _Physical presentation of grief, _he thinks, as Ziva pounds on the door informing him that dinner is ready.

He pulls on an old t-shirt and boxers and is handed a fork and a bowl by Ziva, who is waiting outside the door. She doesn't say anything, but gestures to the TV, where Magnum PI is frozen on the opening credits. He sits down on the couch, which is miraculously tidy after Ziva's efforts, and presses play. Ziva sits next to him with her own bowl, feet curled under her like a cat.

The noodle casserole is surprisingly good, and he feels compelled to tell her how much he appreciates this, the food and the decontamination of his apartment, and, more than anything, her company, even if he won't admit the latter to himself, but finds that he is unable to find the right words. He looks at her, opens his mouth, closes it again. She smiles a small smile, and in that instant he knows she has understood.

Somebody has to.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Hi everyone, thanks for all the awesome reviews - this is my first fanfiction EVER, so I hope you can be nice to me :) but you already have!**

**This is the second part of the story, and I think there will be more. I experimented a bit with this chapter, so it might not be what you were expecting - but please, when you review, be absolutely honest if you think I'm not moving in the right direction. As I said before, this is my first time, so feedback would be really very helpful.**

**I hope you enjoy!**

**xx Lola**

A week later in the bullpen, he is sitting at his desk reading a file he's already read thirty times, trying and failing to ignore the dull ache in his chest. Ziva breezes into the office, collected as ever, but he knows she's tired; she agreed to go out with Abby the night before, to reassure the Goth that Tony would be fine.. Without looking up, without saying anything, he extends one arm and reaches into his desk draw, and throws a Panadol tablet in the general direction of her desk, which she catches with ease. She considers him for a minute, then shakes her head, swallows the pill and settles behind her desk.

_Once, one night when she was lying in his arms, they tried to have a conversation without using words. It was cheesy and immature, she said, but joined in anyway, because he really wanted to try. They stared at each other, thinking hard, but when neither could read the other's expression they burst out laughing. She buried her face in his shoulder, and minutes later they fell asleep like that, both wrapped around each other so tight an observer would think they were one and the same._

_It wasn't until she died that he realised they weren't. _

Gibbs walks into the bullpen shouting instructions, and Ziva springs into action. It takes him a moment to figure out that she's gently pulling him into a standing position, hands him his bag and his gun, and prods him in the direction of the elevator. When the doors ping shut, both she and Gibbs watch him worriedly, and he quickly rearranges his face to look passive instead of distraught. They reach the truck and swing out onto the highway.

The victim is a 40-year-old male Petty Officer, and his youngest daughter, just shy of four years old, found him hanging from the ceiling of her bedroom. The wife is inconsolable, hysterically crying into McGee's chest, almost doubled over from the pain. It's all the Probie can do to keep her upright.

He does not realise he's staring at her, immobilised by the sudden resurgence of grief, until Gibbs nudges him gently.

'Don't do anything,' he says quietly. 'You get to sit this one out.'

He stands there. He can't think, he can't breathe; it's like That Day all over again.

_On the last good day, he made her breakfast: waffles and strawberries and a small glass of champagne to celebrate nothing in particular. She protested that she was on a diet, so he grabbed her hand and his keys and dashed out the front door. Three runs around the block later, when she'd finally stopped laughing, she asked him what on earth he thought he was doing._

_He had cocked his head to the side, and said innocently, 'The calories don't exist any more. So you can't feel guilty about consuming them!'_

_She looked at him, a bemused expression playing on the corners of her mouth. He released his hand and said 'You're it!'_

_She chased him all the way upstairs._

He sees something move out of the corner of his eye, and turns to watch as Ziva squats down in front of the victim's daughter. She is brown haired and olive-skinned, and is curled up on her swing. He watches as Ziva speaks slowly to the little girl, and turns to point at him. The little girl nods, and Ziva lifts her effortlessly onto her hip. The two walk slowly over to him, and it strikes him how alike they are.

'This is Tony,' Ziva says carefully, and the little girl looks up from where she's had her head burrowed in Ziva's hair, and looks him straight in the eye. He doesn't know why, but his own eyes suddenly well up with tears.

_I am Anthony DiNozzo, and I do not cry. I will not cry._

The little girl looks to Ziva. 'Did he know my daddy?'

Ziva raises her head, and looks directly at him, in time to see a single tear slip out and mark out its salty trail against his cheek. She reaches forward, brushes it away, and for a minute lets her hand rest on his cheek. Then she turns and walks back to sit on the swing, placing the little girl in her lap. He follows, and squats down next to them.

'No,' he says, slowly. 'But I'd like to.'

He isn't even surprised when he comes out of the shower that night to find Ziva dicing tomatoes on a chopping board his aunt gave him last Christmas. He raises a questioning eyebrow, and the look he receives in return tells him all he needs to know. Ziva moves on to lettuce, carrot, and capsicum, before tossing in a dressing she has brought in a container herself. She picks up the knife to wash the blade and instead slices her thumb along the sharp edge. To his utter surprise, she bursts out laughing.

She raises her thumb to his eye level, and he watches as a droplet of crimson seeps out of the tiny cut. She draws it back down, and licks the blood off, before running it under the tap.

'I've been trained as an assassin. I can kill any person I choose hundreds of different ways with this knife! And yet I still manage to give myself a paper slice!'

'Paper cut,' he says automatically. She smiles at him coyly.

And it's then he realises, two weeks from Day Zero, he may actually be healing.

The dinners keep coming, with or without Ziva. Some days he will be sitting in the living room and hear an unexpected voice behind him, and a steaming bowl of soup and the accompanying Israeli climb over the back of the couch to join him. Others he will find a container on the counter, with a post-it note of microwave instructions taped to the lid, having miraculously appeared whilst he's in the shower. It is actually a relief not to have to worry about the finer details when he's wrapped in memories of _her; _he will suddenly catch a whiff of her smell passing his bathroom door, and stay there savouring it for seconds, minutes, hours, before realising with a panic he is late for work. Gibbs does not say anything about this and neither does McGee, but Ziva will touch his hand as he walks past her in the bullpen, a gesture he finds comforting. They do not speak of _her_, but she is there making the air thick all the same.

One day, Gibbs tells the team about the fate of the murdered Petty Officer's family they dealt with four weeks ago, the one with the frightened little girl. The wife killed herself; the two daughters were palmed off to relatives, and the youngest, Lila, has just been reported as missing.

He doesn't know who initiates it, but suddenly he's holding Ziva's hand, too afraid to let go.


	3. Chapter 3

He throws himself into Lila's case, ringing every relative the three-year-old has ever met, bringing up past files, birth records, dental records, any sort of records that have been related to the child. He doesn't delegate, or ask for help, but sits behind his desk with a computer mouse in one hand and the phone in the other. He is seemingly unaware of McGee, Gibbs and Ziva, who are all staring at him: Gibbs, bewildered by Tony's sudden interest in paperwork; McGee, unnerved by his superior's out-of-character behaviour; Ziva, cautiously observant. He takes the call he's been waiting for, grabs his jacket and heads to the elevator.

The aunt, Matilda, has absolutely no clue what could have happened to her niece; she tells him that she took Lila for ice-cream, and when she turned around, she was nowhere to be found. He asks to see her room, but it is surprisingly stark for a small child's bedroom; a plain white single bed, one teddy, and a wardrobe standing in the corner are all that occupy the small space. The aunt comes to stand beside him.

'We haven't fixed her room up yet; Lil wanted to paint in pink.' She shakes her head and stares at her feet. He feels a rush of empathy, puts his arm around her shoulder and she leans into contact, and for a minute, the two stand like that, each feeling their own burdens. Suddenly she straightens up, smiles at him, and leaves the room.

He takes swabs of the things Lila might have touched, seals them, and leaves hurriedly. He breezes past the team, McGee and Gibbs looking through the records he pulled earlier, and heads straight to Abby's lab.

When the elevator dings open, he hears hushed voices behind the equipment. He hesitates, just for a second, and then continues to plough through the door. Ziva and Abby look up, both looking thoroughly shocked to see him there.

'Evidence,' he states awkwardly.

There is a silence in which Ziva and Abby look at each other so heavily he feels the air become unnaturally dense, and he realises with a start they must have been talking about him. In that second, in that instant, he feels his blood surge with anger.

'Thanks Tony!' Abby chimes, standing up and moving to take the swabs away from him.

He snatches it out of her grasp. He has not felt this since _she_ passed away and he is sure as hell that no one will understand if he doesn't himself. He has felt depressed, upset, wracked by grief, but anger; well, this is new. It ripples through him like shockwaves; his jaw clenches, his fists curl, and he takes a step away.

And he yells. He yells and yells and yells. He yells about being whispered about; he yells because he is sick of being weak; he yells about betrayal and anger and Lila. He yells because no one is feeling this with him; because _she_ is not here to stop him. He yells until his voice begins to hurt and his body begins to shake and when he finally cannot speak another word, he turns on his heel and marches out of the lab, pushing a whole row of test tubes onto the floor with a satisfying crash. His body is electric with anger.

The elevator dings and begins to close, but a slim arm feeds itself through the crack and the doors open again. He glares at her as the elevator reveals Ziva standing there, wild fire playing in her eyes. She gets in, the doors close, and in one movement she shoves him up against the wall. He is so taken aback by how strong she is that he doesn't even try to retaliate.

_They fought once. He told her that he didn't like strawberry ice cream one night without thinking, and she immediately accused him of lying when he told her that her homemade strawberry ice-cream was delicious. A trivial matter, but they fought until her eyes brimmed with tears and his voice became so loud her next-door neighbours yelled at him to shut up through the wall. He slammed the front door behind him and went off into the night._

_When they went out a couple of days later, it wasn't brought up. They acted as though nothing had happened, and he considered it a strength of their relationship not to hold grudges._

_It wasn't until they'd kissed goodnight that he realised he didn't feel in the least bit guilty._

She takes a step back and flicks the emergency switch, and he stays pinned to the wall at his own will. She stands against the door, so that she is directly opposite him.

He half expects her to pull out her gun and shoot him, but all she does is look at him. There's anger there, and a mixture of emotions also that he cannot pinpoint; but this is Ziva and it's in her nature to mask them.

'Do you think you're suffering this alone, Tony?'

_Yes. No. I don't know._

She lifts her chin a fraction, and he can actually feel the fury radiating out of her. He immediately increases his anger tenfold, as though she's competition.

'She cared for you, yes? Worried about you, even? More than anyone else ever will?'

Immediately the air tastes sour. _We do not talk about this, Zeevah. That was an unspoken rule from Day Zero._

She hesitates, for a moment, and he is momentarily caught out by this rare display of vulnerability. Then she whips around, flips the emergency switch back, and turns to glare at him with such menace he shrinks ever so slightly into the wall.

'Did you ever stop to wonder why you haven't made dinner in a month?'

She steps into the bullpen and disappears up to MTAC before he's even registered what she's said. He stands for a moment, dumbfounded.

And realises that his anger has been joined by guilt; two emotions that are conflicting so violently in his chest that when the elevator dings shut again, he slides down the wall, puts his hands over his face and cries.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Hi guys, thankyou so much for all the reviews. I'm trying really hard here to keep a balance in the storyline, so if I get it a bit wrong I'd appreciate you telling me so it can be fixed. :)**

**I'm also not sure if this is true to character. When I read over this for the first time, I was like 'What have I done!!!' so I made some changes and I hope they're okay. I also added a teensy bit of Tivaness at the bottom to keep it interesting. ;)**

**As always, reviews are really helpful. I don't own NCIS or any of its characters, but my birthday is coming up... **

**xx Lola**

* * *

The rest of the day is spent in stony silence. Ziva won't look at him, and Gibbs and McGee keep glaring at him for upsetting both evidence and Abby. Even Ducky, who wouldn't even know how to hold a grudge, tells him off for being distant. He feels a paradox of sorts in that his own anger has been turned against him, and for that purpose disappears after lunch without so much as an explanation for his boss.

He drives to the ice-cream parlour where Lila went missing, and questions the owners who claim to never have seen the little girl. The taller one, however, a man named Alastair Murphy, does have in his possession a small bloodstained cardigan which he discovered in the large bins at the side of the building two days ago. Tony thanks him, takes the CCTV footage, places the cardigan in a plastic zip-lock bag and drives back to HQ.

He's never been a coward, but he bribes a probie agent on another team to take the cardigan down to the lab. He feels a fresh surge of guilt and grief when he hands the cardigan over, but feels thoroughly incapable of dealing with an upset Abby on top of an angry Ziva, who he can see just out of the corner of his eye. He tells Gibbs about the jacket being tested and walks back to his desk, feeling more alone than ever.

* * *

That night, he wakes up in a cold sweat, breathing heavily. _She _has just died, for the 38th night in a row, and he wonders silently how long it will take for him to crack completely.

He gets out of bed slowly, runs his hands through his hair and pads into the kitchen for a glass of water, reliving Day Zero a thousand times over in the back of his mind. He turns each version over, as though they might reveal a comfort on the flip side, but each is painfully blank.

He reaches for the tap, and accidentally knocks over a Tupperware container and a basting dish he didn't even know he had off the bench, and they land with a thud on his toes. He swears, and reaches down to prise it off his aching foot. There is a yellow post-it note on the lid, the handwriting of which he recognises immediately.

_Tony,_

_I've removed all the little bones, and the marinade is in the smaller container. Put the chicken in the oven at 370 degrees for 45 minutes, sitting in the enclosed basting dish._

_Gibbs does not accept apologies, but I do._

_x Ziva_

He stares at the note, just for a moment. Then, he carefully and deliberately sticks the note to the fridge. He takes the chicken out of the container. He pours the marinade evenly over the meat. He sets the oven to 375, so it will brown evenly.

_She was a master of the roast. His mother, on Thanksgiving each year, had cooked a turkey that was either totally burnt or still raw in the middle, so he had learnt not to expect anything more from roast meat. _

_Then she entered his life, and her lamb roast was amazing. She taught him about meat thermometers, and marinade, and how long meat should be thawed for before even attempting to roast it. In return, he'd taught her about pasta, the wines that went with each type and the sauces he'd invented himself. She'd been totally surprised by the fact that he could cook at all, having only witnessed him gouging away at boxes of take away._

_He cooked well. Just not as well as another foreign girl he knew. _

He snaps. Reaching over and grabbing the phone from its cradle, he dials furiously and cups the phone to his cheek like a lifeline.

'Mmmm… Officer David.' She sounds exhausted, and he hesitates, just for a second, because he doesn't know how deep her anger will run when she finds out it's him.

'Ziva?'

'Tony?' She sounds much more alert. He can hear bedclothes being drawn back and her hair being swept up one-handed as she hold the phone in the other. 'Do you want me to come down there?'

He squeezes his eyes shut, imagining _her, _and the 39 times she's died. He imagines her smile and her hair and her yellow toothbrush which he threw out a week ago.

He has cleaned up crime scenes. He has seen dismembered remains, he has comforted grieving widows, he has waded through human decomposed slush to take photos of partially digested eyeballs. But when he picked up that toothbrush, placed it in the bin, it came close to the hardest thing he's ever done.

He opens his mouth, to tell her this, but finds no sound that will willingly come out.

There is a disconnecting beep on the other end of the line. He holds the phone to his ear, listening to the dead air.

She already knows.

* * *

She arrives at his apartment eight minutes later, by which time he has managed to clamber into his NCIS tracksuit. She picks the lock as always and she lets herself in, her black river of hair cascading down one side of her face. She swishes past him, avoiding eye-contact, in the same tracksuit he's donned for the occasion only about a million sizes smaller, and he is oddly comforted to find she's barefoot, like him. She briskly slots the chicken into the oven, pours herself a glass of wine, and comes to stand facing him, as he watches her over the kitchen counter.

He really has no clue what to say to her. Normal people don't eat chicken at 3am so idle chatter is out. She watches him, cool and unblinking.

The tension, hanging thick between them, is almost unbearable. The seconds tick by, marked by the oven timer, each beat adding a certain dimension of mutual angst. He wants to apologise for the day's incidents, to explain his anger, his grief, his _guilt, _but somehow cannot find the words.

So he does the first thing that occurs to him. By some inexplicable compulsion that overtakes him, he steps around the counter, opens his arms and folds her into them. She squawks, taken by surprise at the uncharacteristic gesture, but relaxes a little into his chest when it transpires he has no intention of letting go. He tips his face into her hair and squeezes her, pouring everything he wanted to say into her body heat, and, after a moment, when he feels her wrap her arms around his waist, he knows she feels his apology.

He releases her, exhales and feels at least some of the weight lift from his shoulders.

And he wonders how she does it.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Hi everyone, thanks so much for the reviews... they really made me want to keep going. I've written this chapter for the main purpose of driving the plot forward, because I'm getting impatient with my own story. I also had an attack of the doubts, and deleted this chapter yesterday from the story because I didn't think it was good enough. That's probably a bit paranoid. Anyway, as always, I appreciate constructive criticism - even if you have the smallest issue with my story I'd love you to tell me about it, because I really want to get my first fanfic right!**

**So on with the plot...**

* * *

Two days later, it appears that 3am dinners have given birth to more practical breakfasts. He gets out of bed at the command of his alarm and finds Ziva in his kitchen eating poached eggs on toast, and a matching plate with an added bonus of bacon on his side of the counter. 

It fleetingly occurs to him that until a month ago, he didn't even _have _a particular side of the counter.

She tells him that his basin is probably cold by now, and he corrects her cheekily and tells her its _bacon _and she punches him in the arm, a smile playing on her lips as she takes another forkful of eggs.

They go separately to work, him citing the will to live as a reason to take his own car.

He wonders if that's true.

* * *

The team finds a corpse. It's a little girl, estimated 4 years old, but it's difficult to tell under the charred flesh. 

_Like her. Blown to smithereens without any sort of warning. _

Ducky takes a tissue sample and Tony sprints up to Abby, throws the sample at her and jogs out again to avoid another confrontation he knows he can't make. CCTV footage shows Lila being taken by the hand by a hooded man and led out of sight from the cameras. Anything that happened after that is anybody's guess, and the guess is going to be his.

He can't do it.

So he sprints past his desk, pausing only to grab his cell and his wallet and drives to the nearest bar. It's dark and dingy even in the middle of the afternoon and is the sort of bar he'd picked up in before. He orders tequila, shots, and within the hour he's as drunk as hell. He finds he doesn't care.

The last thing he remembers before total unconsciousness is someone tall and black asking him if he's okay.

He wonders briefly before he hits the floor if he will ever find the correct response.

* * *

He wakes up in an unfamiliar bed and instantly panics. It's not as though he hasn't woken up in strange beds before but since _her_, he's been unconsciously practising celibacy, and automatically feels as though some sort of shrine has been defiled. He rolls over slowly, grimacing at the unwelcome light of the bedroom lamp even though it appears to be dark outside. He feels himself for clothes, and is relieved to find they're still intact. He sits up, groans under the weight of his hangover, and nearly has a heart attack. 

Ziva is perched on a chair in the corner of the room, glass of wine in hand, her expression unreadable. In the glow of the lamp, it's an _Exorcist _moment and he struggles to regulate his breathing and heart rate enough to ask her why the hell she's in this room.

'Abby found you. Drove you home.' Her voice is calm, but there's an edge in there too and she shifts slightly when she says it. 'What the hell were you thinking, Tony? Have you ever tried to explain to Gibbs why your partner feels a sudden urge to disappear to in the middle of a case?'

It takes him a moment to realise this is Abby's bed he's lying in. The quilt is spider patterned and there are skulls with candles dotted all around the room in varying degrees of fright.

'Guess she lied about the coffin then,' he says, trying to make a joke, but she's having none of it and he can tell. She eyes him for a moment before speaking again.

'You can't keep on like this, Tony.'

'Where's Abby?' _Lame attempt at a subject change, _he thinks.

'At the lab. Tissue samples came through. And I don't know if they're Lila's,' she adds when he opens his mouth to ask that very question.

There is an unbearably awkward pause which he uses to pretend to look for the time. A glow-in-the-dark clock covered in pretend bloodstains tells him it's almost 1am, although what he really wants to know is if she's as embarrassed as he is. He got himself drunk over one stupid case, passed out, and ended up in Abby's bedroom. If that doesn't qualify him for some idiot award he doesn't know what will.

'Sleep it off. I'll wake you at 5.' Ziva says, her tone indicating she thinks the award is coming his way too but she's worried and the familiar lump of guilt rises in his throat. She stands up with a swish and he nearly has a cardiac arrest again when he notices what she's wearing.

The dress is deep purple and backless, and clings to her like a second skin. Her hair is swept up and a silver chain dangling the first three inches of her spine tells him her necklace is not her usual Star of David. There are silver bracelets on her wrists and her earrings remind him of tears.

'Ziva, were you on a _date?_' he says before he can stop himself.

She turns and eyes him to see if he's teasing her, but the way he's gaping at her leaves room for little else other than sincerity. She rubs her neck tiredly.

'Yes, I was. Not that it's your business,' she sighs.

He takes a minute to process this. _Ziva left a date for me. A date. For me. Because I am too stupid to take care of myself._

'Tony?' He's still gaping at her. 'Do you need anything?'

He pulls himself together and looks into her face, feeling totally incapable of feeling the extreme range of emotions he is currently being consumed by.

He tries his hand at a reassuring grin, and makes a sort of strangled noise in indication of his embarrassment. _Ziva. Failed date. My fault. _

She nods curtly, and closes the door behind her. He hears the phone ring, the tune of _The Addams Family, _and Ziva reassures Abby down the line that he is indeed conscious.

He turns over, feeling like a child, the embarrassment of the day's events burning a slow hole in his heart. _Idiot,_ he thinks. _I wasn't even trying to drown out Jeanne._

_Jeanne. _He thinks of her desperately, trying to replace the embarrassment and guilt in his bloodstream with the grief he's grown accustomed to. Ands tries again.

It doesn't come.

* * *

She stays all night, alternating between watching TV and Tony. He knows this because when she wakes him, she's still in the purple dress, her hair now loose around her shoulders and the remote in hand. She's not angry with him but she looks totally wrecked, so he makes her coffee, a peace offering which is accepted gratefully. He follows her meekly to her car and she drives them both to her apartment, so she can get out of the dress and into the shower. He waits patiently on the couch, for the painkillers he found in Abby's bathroom to kick in. 

Her apartment is simple, but overpowering in texture. The walls are the colour of milky coffee and the furniture is all in dark timber, except for his current seating arrangement which is brown suede. Black and white photos adorn the walls, framed only by glass. His eye catches one of Ziva as a toddler, standing beaming in the sun, her arm stretched out to hold the hand of a younger girl almost identical to herself. Another shows adult Ziva standing smugly with what he assumes were her operatives, all Israeli men with bushy facial hair. It's the third one that attracts his attention.

It's a photo of the team: Gibbs, standing stiffly; McGee and Abby draped around each other; Ducky on their other side, smiling his knowing smile; him, flashing his 100 watt grin. But the person smiling softly next to him is not Ziva.

It's Kate.

Before he can pull his jaw up off the floor, a voice curls around him. 'Something interesting, Tony?'

He immediately averts his gaze, and tries and fails to look interested in the brown shagpile rug. She reaches out and places her hand on his back, which makes his skin burn and he swivels around in shock. She looks at him; steady and searching. She opens her mouth as if to speak and he leans forward to catch whatever explanation she has for his dead partner's photo on her wall. She hesitates, and closes it again, steers him towards her front door, and locks her secrets behind them.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Hello there everybody; I'd like to offer my sincerest apologies for the world's longest update, but I nearly went crazy editing this chapter. I've tried to keep a neutral chapter, and it's a little shorter than all the others, but fingers crossed you won't be disappointed. Please pretty please hit me with constructive criticism if you feel the need, I'm absolutely determined not to let this fic take a dive. Anyway, I'll stop being so neurotic, you stop listening to me dither, and together we can progress with the story at a slightly faster rate. Deal?**

**Thanks to all those lovely lovely people who reviewed. **

* * *

The body isn't Lila's, which is an interesting combination of both the comforting and horrifying as now they are investigating two cases. Gibbs wins jurisdiction after a brief battle with Fornell, and Tony throws himself harder into the brick wall this case is becoming.

The burnt corpse belongs to Annabelle Garcia, daughter of another marine, Petty Officer Anthony Garcia, who is so distraught over the death of his daughter he flings himself into Ziva's arms halfway through the interrogation and sobs into her shoulder. Despite himself and his empathy for the man, Tony tries desperately not to laugh as Ziva awkwardly embraces the man who stands at least two feet both taller and wider than herself. She turns to glare at Tony's derisive snort and he sobers himself and remains quiet. After five minutes of steady sobbing, he resigns himself to the fact that Petty Officer Garcia is incapable of continuing and returns to the bullpen to review Lila's case.

No relatives claim to have seen Lila since her mother's funeral and even her aunt is in the clear after careful surveillance of the CCTV reveals her honest mistake. He squints at the file as though it will reveal a surprise answer if he concentrates hard enough and is hardly shocked when it does no such thing. He leans back in his chair, clicks his mouse a few times and stares at the ceiling, wishing desperately that life was simpler.

_She didn't know why he was hurting; he could hardly say that he'd been investigating the corpse of an admiral who had been hacked to pieces in his own bed, so he fabricated some story about a student who, no matter how hard he'd tried, could not possibly pass Tony's film course. She rubbed his back in slow, soothing circles and told him that it was not his fault the student couldn't pass, that there was nothing he could try that he wasn't trying already. He smiled a scratchy smile against her cheek, pretended he felt better and went about making dinner. She watched him contentedly for a while, and then slipped off into the shower. _

_His only thought while slicing potatoes was how wrong they both were._

Ziva walks through the bullpen with Petty Officer Garcia and escorts him into the elevator. When the doors close, she ducks down behind her desk and rummages through her drawer, finally re-emerging with some paper towel to wipe the saltwater tears of the Petty Officer off her cream shirt. The fabric has already gone see-through and is plastered to her shoulder, a pearl-pink strap just visible against her skin. He watches her, oddly fixated by her damp shoulder, as she dabs at the fabric and curses softly in Hebrew.

They'll have to bring Petty Officer Garcia back for questioning; his daughter's death is the only similar case on file and Lila has now been missing for more than two weeks. He remembers how she coped when he asked her questions; how she curled her tiny fists into Ziva's hair; how she stared wide-eyed as her father's corpse was brought out of the house.

How much she looked like Ziva.

He feels somewhat deadened; Gibbs is at the end of his tether, spending hours into the night pouring over triple-checked forensic evidence and searching through any parallels in the two cases. McGee has buttoned up; running god knows what in the database for hours at a time. He has no idea what Ziva's doing, but he does know she watches him as she natters away on the phone in one of her many languages. And he questions relatives about a girl hardly any of them know.

McGee comes into the bullpen holding four coffees and a Caf-Pow! which he sets down gingerly at each person's desk. Ziva absent-mindedly picks hers up by the lid and the entire contents spills down her shirt, soaking straight through to her skin. She is up like a shot, curses in a language he can definitely understand and makes a few desperate and futile wipes at her shirt with the paper towel.

He snorts. She turns to look at him, and his grin widens.

'Great view, Zeevah,' he says, indicating her now transparent blouse, which earns him a glare that would cut glass.

'Keep dreaming, DiNozzo,' she replies, but he knows her well enough to know that she's only a whisker away from laughing with him.

Still chuckling, and without thinking, he pulls open his desk drawer and hands her a shirt he keeps for emergencies like this one.

She stares at him for a minute, a look of total surprise on her face. He stands for a moment, confused by her reaction, and then it slowly dawns on him that he's just handed her a large male shirt to a woman who could not be more than a size 6.

'Thankyou Tony, but I might stick to my own size, yes?'

She nudges his shoulder as she brushes past him, but there's a subtle smile turning up the corners of her mouth, so he stops mentally kicking himself and instead smiles good-naturedly at his own mistake. She returns moments later in a black shirt she reserves for the same purposes as his, and she smiles coyly at him from her desk.

McGee returns from giving Abby her Caf-Pow! and sits behind his desk, picking up a doughnut as he does so. Ziva taps at her keyboard, but her eyes are on McGee, which in turn makes Tony glance between the two curiously. He looks to Ziva with a question on his lips but she silences him with a look. There is half a heartbeat's pause; and McGee whips round and glares at Tony.

'You put toothpaste in my doughnut?'

He didn't, but he sure as hell knows who did. He walks over to the desk where she's trying and failing to hide a grin so wide he can see the caps on her molars. She looks up at him, biting hard on her cheek.

'You have learnt well, my child,' he says dramatically in his best Zulu voice, and does a mock bow, holding his hands together as though in prayer. Her grin widens, his grin widens, and before either of them can do anything about it, they have collapsed in fits of hysterical laughter.

They laugh because of McGee; because the coffee always tastes so damn awful; because he got drunk; because he cannot fix this; because she almost wore his shirt; because the emotion, rooted deep between them, has to escape somehow. They attract attention from bewildered teams all over the room, which instead of sobering them makes them laugh even harder. They laugh and laugh and laugh, collapsing into each other's embrace, shaking so hard McGee begins to worry about their mental health. When breath has been caught and composure maintained, they sink down into their respective chairs, Ziva grinning like a Cheshire cat, him revelling in the fact he still has the capacity to laugh like an idiot.

Gibbs breezes through the bullpen.

'Gear up. We've got another body.'

And just like that, six words they've heard a million times change the landscape.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Hello everybody, thought you might like an update. This chapter's styling is a little different to what I've done before, but fingers triple-crossed you like it. I've actually sat on this one for a while, tweaking away at it until I was satisfied; this was somewhat stylistically difficult to write. **

**Please review, it makes it so much nicer writing the next chapter. All you devoted readers have been absolute angels. **

**I don't own anything, but I did get Season 3 for Christmas which made me very happy. :)**

**xx**

* * *

It's not Lila. 

But in his mind, the newest four-year-old girl, burned and scarred, who Ducky zips into a teddy-sized body bag is not that different either.

She picks his lock against her better judgment that night, and finds him staring mutely at the wall. She puts her coat in the closet and her shoes by the door, peels off her socks and gloves and crosses the carpet to sit on the barstool on her side of the counter. Unarmed with a casserole, there is no food to start a conversation with, so she instead watches the back of his head over the green suede of the couch, as he examines the light blue walls with apparent indifference.

He can't reasonably explain it, but he imagines her speaking behind him; asking if he's okay, slotting in a movie, pouring merlot into the crystal glasses his sister gave him for Christmas. In his head these things are meant well but do not ease his unspeakable numbness, confusion, so he sits silently as she shifts on the barstool with the wonky leg, willing her to leave. When she does speak, it's not aimed at him, but at Luigi's Pizzas, who promise an extra large meat 'n' cheese lovers' in thirty minutes, timed from the moment she hangs up.

So they sit. And they wait for whatever comes next.

* * *

There is a connection between the two murders, but no apparent link to the abduction. They are all thinking this, but Gibbs insists on treating the three cases as one and the same. Both children were burnt with a petroleum-based compound which Abby identifies as the same, and both were bludgeoned to death by an object which has left a perfect indentation in each tiny skull. For the first time in many years, Tony honestly feels as though he will be sick as Ducky pulls charcoal skin away from the pale bones of their faces, to pour a plaster mould into the concave fractures. 

Petty Officer MacPherson has a somewhat more stoic persona than Garcia, and answers McGee's questions politely but shakily. It appears his daughter Pira was being dropped off at ballet by her mother the last time anybody saw her. McGee identifies the ballet school as one near the park where both girls have been found, so Gibbs organises himself and Ziva into the car to drive to the ballet school and Tony and McGee out of it, with specific instructions to track down the precise concrete floor upon which Abby believes the bodies were burnt. McGee tries to protest, citing impossibility, but Tony grips his arm and steers him into the building.

He settles behind his desk. He thinks of her. And when he has thought so much it is unclear which _her_ is preoccupying his mind the most, he rolls up his sleeves and gets down to work.

* * *

He asked her about Kate, that night with the pizza. Another unspoken rule between them splintered as the words left his lips, and the question hung above them, a dead weight that appeared immovable. He watched as her jaw tightened and she raised her head from watching her finger trace the rim of her wine glass. There was a thick silence; a silence so loud and long that it pierced his eardrums and he visibly flinched under her gaze, almost regretted asking at all. 

'She died today.'

Her voice crept out of her lips, as though she was breaking her silence after a long time, and he watched as she raised the glass to the light. He turned to face the wall where the calendar is pinned and instantly felt mortified that he did not notice Kate's deathday. Mortification gave way to guilt, which in turn broke down the barriers of a wound cut fresh. He turned back to her, hoping she didn't notice his red eyes.

'Why do you know that?'

She shifted uncomfortably, and he was once again caught out by her vulnerability. He watched as the impression of her tongue ran around the inside of her cheek, and held his breath when her mouth opened to form an answer.

'Because I'm replaceable.'

And Kate wasn't.

This tacit phrase laced itself intricately with the air, which was suddenly too close for his comfort. The emotions in his mind, grief, anger, confusion, frustration, and the contradicting numbness, suddenly swam through his veins with such force he took an involuntary sharp intake of breath.

She was there before he even said anything. She put her hand against his cheek and looked so intensely into his face that he was sure she could see out the other side of his skull.

'I am sorry, Tony. I truly am.'

She was not apologizing for her own actions. She was sorry for him, but it was not sympathy that shone in her eyes; it more closely resembled empathy.

He wasn't sure why, but in that heartbeat he believed her.

* * *

Another brick wall places itself in front of the team; Pira attended ballet school but did not re-emerge, and the teachers went into a staff meeting straight after class and did not witness her leave. There is a moment of revelation, however, when Matilda, Lila's aunt, turns out to be a teacher there. According to Gibbs, she will come in for more questioning later that afternoon. 

Tony passes the time by watching Ziva surreptitiously watch him. It amuses him somewhat that she doesn't directly look at him, but glances at the clock or McGee, focusing her peripheral vision on Tony when she thinks he's not watching. Or maybe she does know. He finds it difficult to tell.

Around three, she crows with delight and pulls a McGeek style stunt on the databases. She pulls up Matilda's records, which Tony points out have no dancing qualifications. She cocks an eyebrow at him and pulls up another record, of a Matilda Graham, who, despite dyed hair and an eyebrow ring, is unmistakably Lila's aunt. This incarnation has so many dancing qualifications Tony's head begins to swim. The record, Ziva points out triumphantly, shows Matilda's romantic involvement with a drug ringleader.

Gibbs looks over her appraisingly and claps her on the back, hoisting his bag over his shoulder and barking for McGee and Tony to come and pick Matilda up with him. Ziva smiles smugly behind them as they scramble for their jackets and backpacks.

Tony turns to her as she sits back down behind her desk. He walks slowly over to her, braces his arms against it and leans down into her line of sight.

His eyes never leave hers. 'Whatever would we do without you,' he says, before standing and leaving to follow his boss.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: Hey everyone, so sorry for the hideous delay. It sounds improbable, but mytwo-year-oldcousin threw my monitor against the wall and I've only just got my new computer up and running. Snaps for Windows XP!**

**Now, the following chapter is my first attempt at an actual climactic NCIS moment, so it may suck. Most of the stuff I write is character-driven so the actual physical specifics probably bite, but I would love you all to take a minute to let me know what you think. I can always re-write it.**

**I also apologise for the cliffhanger. Don't hate me, the next chapter will be up in the next few days.**

**Have I mentioned what angels you reviewers have been to me? My work would be nothing without you.**

**As always, I own Seasons 1-3 of NCIS and nothing more.**

**xx Lola**

* * *

The team arrives at the dance studio to find Matilda standing at the barre, with twelve little girls sinking into plies behind her. Tony clears his throat loudly, and twelve tightly knotted heads swivel in his direction. Matilda does not. She lowers herself down into another plie, and continues counting in four four time.

He shivers, just a little. She is not counting in sync with the classical music spilling over the classroom, and her voice is pitched at a level usually reserved for speaking to the mentally unstable.

He takes a step forward. He does not wish to upset the girls staring up at him with Disney-wide eyes, so he coughs again and this time Matilda acknowledges the noise.

'Go away!' she cries, a little too hysterically.

The twelve children swivel to face their teacher.

'And why is that, Miss Graham?' He keeps his voice level, moves towards her.

She turns around, and he is completely caught off guard to find tears streaming salty paths down her cheeks. He takes a step forward, seeking to comfort her, but she shrieks and takes a step back into the mirrored wall, where she screams again in surprise at the contact.

He is not a profiler, but there is something, like a voice in his head, maybe even a trick he learned from a movie, in the room, in her eyes, spelling danger. The non-agent side of him momentarily panics, until someone he vaguely recognises as himself meets her red-eyed gaze and calmly assures her he won't hurt her. Gibbs steps around him and reasserts the fact, and McGee reaches slowly, surreptitiously, into his pocket for handcuffs.

'We don't want to take you into custody, Miss Graham. We need to ask you some questions. Would you let us do that?' Gibbs says, as calm as ever. He takes a step towards her, and she lets out a sob and shrinks further into the wall.

'Miss Graham?'

The voice comes out of nowhere, and all four adults turn to the huddled mass of pink tulle, in time to see one girl hesitantly step forward. 'Are you okay?'

Matilda, who is sobbing almost hysterically by now, turns away from the girl and slides down the wall. McGee moves forward uncertainly to cuff her slender wrists.

'I would not do that.'

A man's voice glides out of the wall behind them, followed by an AK-47 machine gun pointed directly between Tony's eyes. The drug lord Ziva led them to, Eric Granger, brings up the rear, along with a cell phone.

'Granger.' Gibbs greets him calmly, but there's a warning behind the tone and non-agent Tony's heart-rate elevates to unprecedented levels.

The man smirks. 'I see you've met my girlfriend.'

But the exchange that follows between the two men is an effective blur to Tony; it is as though the world has slowed down around him; an Edvard Munch or Marc Chagall painting too big and abstract for him to navigate. He watches Matilda, shaking with fear and a mix of emotions he recognises as similar to his recent own, as she peels her tutu off her pelvis and lets it drop to the floor. Around her waist is a metal belt, segregated by tubes of what he assumes is gunpowder. Three wires run from each tube to under her leotard. A cell phone connects them all together.

_Bomb._

This is his only coherent thought as he slowly, purely on instinct, presses speed dial on the phone clipped to his belt.

He will wonder later why his actions were so instinctive, but deep down he already knows the answer.

He hears the distant sound of her answering, and turns to angle his hip so every word dripping from the mouth of Granger will be heard on the other end.

'I was not planning on your arrival, Agent Gibbs,' Granger says coldly. 'A rookie mistake, I admit.' He cocks an eyebrow. 'But it seems that now you're going the same way as these unfortunate children.'

He gestures behind him and for the first time, McGee and Gibbs are alerted to the bomb. Matilda is shivering, wide-eyed and frightened. Many of the girls are crying, others bewildered, and Tony goes to stand in front of them, if only so they do not see the scene unfolding before them.

Gibbs turns back, unnaturally collected. 'Why would you want to kill these children, Granger?' he says in a controlled tone.

A wall goes up in Granger's eyes. 'They deserve to burn,' he says. Matilda lets out a strangled cry, and Granger whips around to face her. 'Like your niece,' he says maliciously. 'You said she looked like my daughter.'

Tony's heart rate leaps before the trigger is pulled. Matilda cries out as the bullet pierces her skin. The blood begins pooling a circular stain into the fabric of her leotard.

'You see,' he continues, as though his girlfriend's arm has not been shredded three seconds earlier, 'I miscalculated. Finding a replacement for mydaughter was more difficult than I anticipated.'

The noise, so much noise, echoing through Tony' head is beginning to be unbearable. Heartbeats, terrified little faces, gunshots, Matilda's cries, all are screaming at him so loudly in his head it is a struggle to hear the disconnecting beep emanate from his phone. And just like that, because he knows she is coming, the noise, which he imagines drilling holes in his skull, is silenced.

'By my calculations, Agent Gibbs, there are about five minutes to go before that,' Granger indicates the now unconscious Matilda, 'goes off.'

'Did you kill her?'

He looks around to see where the question has come from, but sixteen pairs of eyes are on his face and he takes a second to figure out those four words came from him.

Granger tilts his head to the side abruptly. He smiles a smile so cold the temperature drops thirty degrees and Tony feels the familiar rise of Goosebumps on his arms.

'I'm assuming you mean the bitch's niece, agent?'

'Yes.' He feels a burst of anger. 'Her name is Lila.'

Again, the voice feels unearthly to his ears but he determines from the faces around him that he is in fact still talking.

'No. In fact,' Granger says, 'she's behind you.'

He freezes, and turns around slowly. She is in the back of the group and her face is contorted into a horrific expression that he recognises as fear. Tears cluster around her cheeks and she shrinks into the huddle further, as though he will hurt her.

He almost goes to reach for her, but Gibbs puts a hand on his bicep. 'Don't,' he says quietly, and Tony retracts his outstretched arm.

'What will it take for you to let us go, Granger?' Gibbs says calmly, although for the first time Tony notices a strain in the question. McGee moves behind Tony and shepherds the girls into the furthermost corner.

Granger's face hardens. 'I won't,' he says, using the rifle to indicate Matilda, 'after what the bitch has done.'

Both junior agents watch as their boss changes tack.

'I lost my daughter too, Granger. It's harder than you ever can imagine.'

Granger jerks his head stiffly away.

'This isn't the answer,' Gibbs continues. 'Killing these girls won't let the pain escape.'

And then the whole room freezes as a knock on the door penetrates the air.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: Hey people, the second part of this two-part chapter has arrived. It was so nice hearing from you reviewers, it makes it all worthwhile. I really have no indication if this is any good or not, so I've felt my way through the dark to conclude the hostage scene. I apologise for the rude words. They just seemed to work better. This chapter is also really, really short. Apologies for that, too.

Ooo, and brownie points if you can spot the text from the first chapter. :)

Anyway, the next and final chapter is finished and I'll post it tomorrow.

By the way, Kit, you were absolutely spot on. ;)

I love all you reviewers very much. Please help yourself to the chocolate brownies I made this morning.

Xx Lola

* * *

'Granger, I'm going to need you to open up.'

At the sound of her voice, he feels the knot in his ribcage unravel so rapidly it's all he can do not to laugh in relief. Gibbs, however visibly tenses, as does Granger.

'What the fuck do you want?' he spits.

'My name is Officer Ziva David. I'd like to talk to you.'

'Fuck off!' Granger half-yells, his agitation growing. He waves the gun at the agents, as if daring them to come closer.

'Mr Granger, if you're not going to let me in, I have no problem with breaking down this door.' Tony almost snorts. Negotiator Ziva was never going to work all that effectively.

'FUCK OFF!' Granger yells. He grabs the Tony by the collar and pushes him towards the door. 'Tell her to fuck off,' he says violently, and for the first time Tony sees the fear in his eyes. He uses the vulnerability of the dealer to surreptitiously check the timer on Matilda's waist.

_1 minute. Holy crap. _

'I said tell her!' Granger whispers, shoving Tony into the door. He winces, and with a quick glance at Gibbs, takes a deep breath.

'Officer David. I think our captor would like you to leave.' He sends up a silent prayer to the gods that her common sense rather than her Mossad roots come into play. _Preferably in the next 45 seconds._

'Copy, Agent DiNozzo. Is Agent Todd with you?'

He shifts, and looks straight into Granger's eyes. 'No, she isn't. But she will be shortly.'

'THAT'S ENOUGH!' Granger roars, and shoves Tony back into the centre of the room. He looks at the agent with fear written deep in his irises. 'What did you tell her?'

_30 seconds. Come on, Ziva._

'Nothing.' He puts on the charm smile but it feels hollow, even to him.

'Granger,' Gibbs interrupts, 'Let the girls go.'

Granger's eyes flash dangerously. 'No.'

Gibbs' eyes flick to the window, and a small smile erupts on his face. 'Yes.'

At that moment, the door flies open, and fifteen armed agents burst into the room. 'GO GO GO! TAKE HIM DOWN NOW!' Suddenly, the agent in him kicks in. He throws himself on the ground, taking McGee with him and covers his head as smoke and footsteps pound a bass line around him. Gunshots are fired, and the thud to his left indicates a fallen Granger. He watches as three agents seize childish arms and sprint out the door, and then there is a flurry of blackness as one of agents sprints past him. She leans over Matilda and reaches towards the belt, but through the haze he sees that something has stopped her.

And then, in the heartbeat's pause he watches as Lila, thrown whimpering across her aunt's body protectively, bumps the timer.

Without thinking, he jumps up, throws the agent over his shoulder and runs.

And not two seconds later, the entire building blows up.

The silence that follows is so loud he watches everything slow to the tempo of his heart. When he puts Ziva down from his shoulder, she says something to him that he can hear but cannot comprehend.

Before her, he'd had no idea that grief could take a physical form – he'd assumed it was emotional impact, the weight of the unbearable loss flooding through every rational thought left. But this physical presentation; well, it is excruciating. He can't breathe, he can't speak, he can't even bring himself to cry. He feels as though he could vomit for a thousand years and still have bile in his gut. He feels – well, numb with pain. This thought makes him laugh, a low, hollow laugh. Multiple pairs of hands on his upper back, gentle and consoling he is sure, although when he doesn't respond to the touch and the hands are lifted away, each has left a raw imprint that sting as though he's been burned.

He doesn't stay to take crime scene photos, or deliver witness statements, or to bag and tag evidence. He gets in his car, and he drives away. And that is all he can do.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: So it's finally over. I'm going to cry. This thing has been like my baby, and now it's all grown up! tear Hopefully you all like it, I think it's a suitably understated ending. Please tell me what you think, I hope to hear everybody's opinion.**

**I'm not convinced 'unspool' is a word but I liked the sound of it, so I apologise to any grammar Nazis who might feel upset.**

**I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all my amazing reviewers, who I would individually list but there are bazillions of you so instead I offer you a virtual hug. You've been outstanding.**

**Till next time!**

**Xx Lola**

* * *

On the way home, unlike any other day in the past two months, he finds himself standing in the checkout queue with a packet of Peanut M&Ms, simply because _she _hated them. The crispy ones were more to her taste, and the consistent crunching of the biscuit centre made him crazy. _Either we both go plain or we deal with it, she had said crossly. He'd sat beside her on the couch and delved once again into the peanut ones, if only to drown out the noise as she continued her Cookie Monster-like attack on the coloured pellets. He glared at her, she glared at him, and both crunched away, refusing to back down._

_That night, both went to bed fuming. _

He really doesn't know why he hasn't thought of how stupid it was before.

He pays and leaves, as the sky opens and raindrops begin their descent to the earth. He looks up in time to see the blue slowly erased by the grey of the cloud, an act of closure which he finds ethereally calm. He turns to walk to the car, but he notices a gap in the sky; a streak of yellow light where no cloud has dared travel, and he understands in that instant why humans hold faith in religion.

At his apartment, the door is ajar; he draws his gun and sidles around the door. He doesn't notice her at first, but the river of hair straightened and tied in a ponytail difficult to miss.

'You can put it away, Tony.' She swings off her barstool and turns to face him.

In that moment, just in the second she meets his gaze and he holsters his gun, he hates her. He hates her for not disarming the bomb in time; for not saving Lila when she should have. He hates the dinners and the calmness and the concern; he hates her.

But above all, he hates that he can't function without her.

And he opens his mouth and pours out the anger, the hate. He takes all of it, and pours it into her, if only that she should _listen, _and understand what it is he feels. He yells at her for not saving Lila, for not fixing a case he could normally have solved; for making him believe he was fixed when the cracks are still showing. He gets her angry, so angry that she begins to scream back, shouting abuse in multiple languages and defending his accusations so emphatically that she deliberately invades his personal space, concentrating the noise so loudly both are almost oblivious to the other's comments. They continue to scream for a good five minutes, dragging up whatever past grievances they can, ignoring the banging of walls from neighbours and the crying of a baby next door. He yells at her for the time she threw the stapler at him; she counters with the series of events that saw them locked in a freight container for a whole day. They get each other angry, to furious, to the downright mad, neither prepared to back down. Then Ziva, in an uncharacteristic loss of control, picks up a pot plant from the counter and smashes it against the wall.

Suddenly, both are quiet.

He feels it, like a click, in the three millimetres of space between them. He grabs her shoulders and slams her into the wall, searing a kiss over her mouth, sandwiching her body up against his. She grabs the back of his head and kisses him so soundly that he grinds his leg between hers and both stumble sideways as they make towards the couch, bumping into various pieces of furniture along the way. He tugs her hair loose, feels it unspool against his cheek. He wraps his arms so tightly around her that he fleetingly wonders if he will bruise her; but then she runs her hands down his spine and he stops thinking; he stops thinking about anything at all. He pushes her down on the couch, only to have his collar grabbed as he is pulled down on top of her.

He's lying with her on the couch, hand tangled in her hair, lips sealed over hers; and he feels that the world, for once, is free of noise and pain.

* * *

She's gone when he wakes up, but he doesn't expect anything more. He drives to work and goes down to autopsy to be with the second cousin identifying Lila, who thanks him quietly for doing everything he could, as she clamps her handkerchief over her mouth. He watches as Ducky opens the drawer and slides her burnt body out; the woman gasps softly and turns away.

He doesn't. He looks at her face; the tanned porcelain skin, burned and bruised, the wild curly hair singed to almost nothing, the death written upon her face as she concludes her time in this world with nothing but third degree burns to show for it. He thinks of the time he spent wondering about her and how he would have done anything to solve it. He touches her lightly on the hand, and silently says goodbye as her face disappears into the drawer.

And all he sees is Ziva.

When he goes upstairs, he walks to her desk and leans casually against it. She looks at him with a hint of guilt and anger mixed in with the cocktail of surprise, and he smiles at her.

'I can cook, you know.'

She eyes him suspiciously.

'I can cook chicken. In fact, I have a friend who makes this great marinade, and the chicken goes all crispy on the outside.' He pauses. 'I bet you'd like it.'

She glares at him. 'Is this friend just another woman you've slept with, Tony?'

He grins. 'Maybe.'

She stands up. 'I am not interested, Tony, in your conquests.' She goes to move into the corridor, but he stops her with one long arm.

'I wasn't talking about a one-night stand, Zee-vah,' he says, trying and failing to read her expression. 'I was thinking this friend and I might give a relationship a try.'

She raises her eyebrows one millimetre.

'In fact,' he says, the side of his mouth curling up slightly, 'I thought you might like to try this chicken of hers tonight. Although it might be more convenient if we go to her place.'

She considers him, and there is an icy silence in which he has an attack of regret for even asking. A sly smile spreads over her features almost imperceptibly. 'Fine. I'll meet you there.'

She sidesteps him and begins walking to the elevator, but he sees her smile and runs after her. He catches her wrist and presses a kiss to her hair.

She starts at the contact but relaxes when he smiles down at her. She trails her fingers across his lips, brushing her knuckles over his cheek, and steps into the waiting elevator.

Somehow, this time, he's confident the glue, binding his fractured soul together, will stick. Because it's not _her _he needs; but another who will iron the creases as they come.


End file.
